


KM500

by Jadesfire



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2017-12-03 17:06:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/700638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadesfire/pseuds/Jadesfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some library users are more difficult than others</p>
            </blockquote>





	KM500

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Apiphile, who wanted a fic with Sherlock in the Wellcome Library, which does actually contain books with the titles mentioned.

_No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.  
Samuel Johnson_

There came a point in every cataloguer's life when you just had to put up your hands and step away from the MARC tags. For Clare, it was when she glanced over at the box of donated books on her desk, noticed the odd configuration of holes and automatically thought "DISAPPROVING BOX IS DISAPPROVING." Before she could do anything catastrophic to the record on her screen, she saved and closed it, although she did spare a passing thought to wonder if lolspeak was recognised under AACR2.

Stretching a little, she gathered up some books and her phone and headed out to the enquiry desk, taking the spare computer and flicking through the pile of requests in the tray while she waited for her email and the internet to open. Nothing unusual, and David would get to them later. He probably wouldn’t appreciate her ‘helping’ when she was supposed to be in the office not out here. She’d brought out some of the simpler processing, and she flicked through the book on the top of the pile, half-listening to him talk to the reader at the counter.

As the conversation went on, getting increasingly heated, she decided not to look over David’s shoulder at the reader’s card on the counter and look up the record of the man currently arguing with him, and only partly because she wasn’t sure it was entirely ethical. From the way he’d already told David about his sister, where he’d had dinner last night, and why he should get a better pair of trainers if he planned to keep up the running, she suspected that if she did anything even vaguely nosy, the man was going to notice.

“I just need to know what he borrowed last year,” the man was saying, leaning far enough over that his long scarf pooled on the counter.

He was making no effort to keep his voice down, and while this wasn’t a silent study space, other readers were giving him irritable glares. It wasn’t really her job, but technically Clare was the senior member of staff, and David was starting to look a bit panicked around the edges.

“Excuse me,” Clare said, stepping over and resisting the urge to roll her eyes as David gratefully yielded his place to her, “I’m going to have to ask you to keep you voice down, and,” she added quickly as he opened his mouth to protest, “unless you have a court order, we cannot give you the information you’re asking for.”

“That takes too long,” the man said, lowering his head to the counter and gently thumping it there a couple of times. It was something Clare was often tempted to do herself, but she was fairly sure he was the first reader to do so. “I am trying,” he said between thumps, “to catch,” thump, “a murderer.”

David had retreated completely at this point, leaving Clare on her own, something she’d have to remember to thank him for later. She raised an eyebrow. “Then I suggest you speak to the police,” she said, trying to hit the tone of voice that usually told people this conversation is over. The one they didn’t teach you at library school, but was essential to learn on the job.

The man made a frustrated noise, then lifted his head a fraction, irritated expression clearing suspiciously quickly. “And if I am the police?” he asked.

“There you are.” A shorter man with sandy hair came up behind the man, frown on his face. “What’s going on?”

“I was just explaining to,” he paused, making a show of looking at Clare’s name badge, “Clare, here that I am on official police business and need to see those loan records.” He dug in a pocket, fishing out a leather wallet and opening it to flash the warrant card at her. Which would have been fine, except that he put his hand over the library card on the counter at the same time.

One day, Clare was going to do a post for the library blog about all the things readers tried to get away with, from claimed website outages that stopped them renewing books to downloading from torrents on library PCs. But the most common was definitely swapping, borrowing or stealing IDs, and assuming the librarians were too slow to notice. Of course, if she did write that post, she would be giving away valuable trade secrets, but at least it might stop people insulting her intelligence. Besides, the fake policeman might have been a good liar, but his friend had been too startled to hide his expression in time.

Then there was the fact that David, bless him, had brought the man’s record up on the screen.

Clare looked at the police ID, which was actually a pretty good one and the picture matched for once, then down at his hand on the counter.

“Well,” she said, making as big a show of checking the screen as he had done with her name badge, “Mr Holmes, I suggest that if it’s official police business, next time you bring an official policeman. One whose name matches his ID.”

Behind Mr Holmes, his friend was doing a very bad job of hiding his laughter.

“Do you have any idea how important this is?” Mr Holmes said, dropping his voice at last, although Clare was fairly sure it was out of temper rather than consideration of others.

“Do you have any idea how many people tell me that?” she shot back, just as quietly. She had to give it to him, though, he was more convincing than most. In a previous job, every enquiry point had had a panic button under the counter, just in case. They’d never actually needed one here, but as Mr Holmes glared daggers at her, Clare was starting to question the wisdom of that decision. To her relief, his friend stepped in before things could get out of hand.

"Sherlock," he said, keeping his voice low, "this isn't helping." He put one hand on Mr Holmes's arm, carefully turning him away from the counter.

David looked over from the other side of the reading room, where he'd retreated with a trolley of books. When he caught Clare's eye, he had the decency to look a bit sheepish, then quickly turned back to his shelving. She made a mental note to suggest that he went on a Dealing with Difficult People course next time one was available, although even she had to admit that this was proving to be a special case.

A few steps away, a furious whispered argument seemed to be taking place, the kind of angry hissing that she associated more with parents of small children in supermarkets. For here, it was hard to tell who was winning.

At least they were keeping their voices down now, although they were definitely going to get complaints from the severe-looking woman at the far end of the table. It looked like they could be at it for a while, and out of sheer curiosity, Clare turned her attention to the reader record on the screen. Under the record for Holmes, Sherlock was quite a list of requests. Given the nature of the library’s collection, titles like Poison: a social history and Death and the body displayed were fairly normal, and she’d long since stopped being surprised by anything anyone here read.

What Clare could mostly tell from this collection of books was that there wasn't much that Sherlock Holmes wasn't interested in, and she wondered what kind of person needed to know about both Molecules of murder and Medicine, madness and social history.

When she looked up again, the private argument had been put on hold, and Mr Holmes was looking sideways at her, his gaze too calculating for her to be entirely comfortable with it. Shaking off his companion's hand, he strode across to the enquiry desk again, one hand rummaging in a pocket.

"Pen," he said, pulling one of the "Find it in the Library" leaflets from its stand, and snapping his fingers when she just looked at him blankly. "Pen," he said again, more insistently, snapping his fingers.

"I'm sorry, sir," Clare said, with the measured politeness of three customer services courses and eight years of dealing with the general public, "We don't lend stationery. But you can buy a Library pen for just 50p."

It was his turn to stare blankly, but Clare had once spent an hour being harangued by Professor Jackson when he'd found they didn't have the complete backrun of The Chemical Gazette. There wasn't much Mr Holmes could do to intimidate her. From behind him, his friend made a sound that might have been a stifled laugh, or possibly just a sigh, then stepped around him, opening his wallet.

"Do you have change?" he asked, handing over a pound.

She passed him the pen and his change, meeting his eyes as Mr Holmes snatched it and began scribbling on the leaflet.

"Sorry," she said to the friend, who had something of a long-suffering air about him, "I've no idea what happens to stationery around here, but if we lend it, it just doesn't come back. My only working theory so far is that people eat it."

"It's no problem," he said, glancing at his friend. "For those of us who remember to carry our wallets around, anyway."

"Here." Pushing the leaflet across the desk, Mr Holmes tapped the scrawl of handwriting in the blank space at the bottom.

"I've already told you..." Clare began, but broke off when Mr Holmes fixed her with that steady stare again. He'd been easier to handle when he'd been angry.

"I know you can't tell me anything without six policemen and a form filled out in triplicate," he said, his voice low and intense, "but you can satisfy your own curiosity, as you've already done once today." She felt her face warm a little under the knowing look. "Just look up this man's library account. That's all I'm asking. You don't have to tell me anything. The number on there is Detective Inspector Lestrade's. The real Lestrade," he added quickly, seeing her frown as she recognised the name from the warrant card. "All I'm asking is that you look at this man's account and decide whether or not he's a murderer."

Clare wavered for a long moment. She really shouldn't. However many provisions there were in the Data Protection Act, she was reasonably sure that she shouldn't look at a random person's library record just on the say of a stranger. Not even when he'd apparently known David's entire family history just by looking at him, when there was something in his face that said he was more than just another scammer. And not because his friend was looking at her reassuringly, as though trying to convey telepathically that it was all going to be alright, if she just did as she'd been asked. She looked away, her eyes falling on the list of requests under 'Holmes, Sherlock' again.

Without meeting his eyes, she pulled the leaflet closer, cleared the screen and typed the name in the search box. When the results came up, she angled the screen carefully before making her selection, trying to make sure neither of the men on the other side of the counter could see it. Then she opened the requests tab.

The thing was, you really could tell a lot about a person from their loan history. Their interests, education, sometimes their plans and even their aspirations. If you were a regular reader, a librarian could probably tell as much about you as your doctor, at least when it came to what was going on inside your heads.

As she ran her eyes down the list, Mr Holmes said in a low voice, "He’s poisoned at least three people, beaten another into a coma, and I’m trying to prove it was him before he does it again. He’s switching MOs, thinking we can’t keep up with him, and I need to get ahead of him if I’m going to stop him. But the police won’t help unless I have proof. And the only proof I have at the moment is that he’s here at least three times a week."

Turning away from the screen for a moment, she tried to see from his face whether or not he was serious. “How do you know he’s-“

“Because I followed him,” he said with a wave of his hand that clearly meant ’obviously’. “Not to mention his answerphone message. And the same way I know that your colleague is hoping to enter the London Marathon next year – talk him out of it, he’s not ready – and the way I know that you’re not going to take go on that blind date this evening.”

She blinked at him for a moment, then looked back at the screen, hoping she was keeping most of her shock from her face. The list of titles looked back at her. Most people who visited this library had a selection of books that would raise eyebrows in polite conversation. Mr Holmes' own list was fairly suspicious in its own right if it came to it. But on the other hand, they dealt with hundreds of people every year and there were patterns. Things you could tell, things you could tell were missing, and things that didn't fit. Like a book on head injuries amongst a collection of biochemical textbooks.

"Beaten," she muttered, then looked up at Mr Holmes, who was still watching her expectantly. His face relaxed a little when he saw her expression, that fixed stare turning into something softer.

“Please,” he said, then glanced at his friend, who had cleared his throat meaningfully. He stiffened, “and thank you.”

And then they were gone.

She sat looking at the door for a long time after he’d left, coat flapping behind him and his friend giving her an apologetic look before hurrying after him. She had the impression he had to do that a lot. The thank you had been odd as well, said in a way that suggested he hadn’t been entirely sure how it was supposed to be pronounced.

Still thinking, she cleared the screen again and typed his name back in. Holmes, Sherlock. The collection was just as odd-looking as most of her readers, an oddness that was practically normal around here. But there were the things he had said. The things he’d known. She ran her eye down the list of titles again, trying to work out what having all those items on his record could mean, what kind of person it made him.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the computer she’d abandoned, her email and a map open on the screen, the pile of books she was supposed to be working on. There was a rota on the wall behind her, clearly showing that she wasn’t supposed to be out on the enquiry desk, particularly half an hour before closing when she was likely to get caught up in something that would make her late. Her mobile was half-hidden under the keyboard, a personal touch amongst the things that were obviously for work. Okay, so he might have made a guess at what she was doing – because really, Karen had terrible taste in men and Clare had always planned to use work as an excuse not to go – but it didn’t make it less impressive, seeing the things that didn’t fit and putting the puzzle together. And she still didn’t know how he’d known about David’s marathon training.

Not really thinking about it, she pulled up the other record again, staring at it for a long moment. Then she leaned far enough back in her chair to catch David’s eye.

“Can you take over again?” she said, getting to her feet and picking up the leaflet. “I need to make a phone call.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is the Moys Classification for Criminal Law. Because yes, I am that geeky


End file.
